So here we have a work that I honestly cannot explain why it's taken me so long to get round to. I picked up the first five volumes of Spike's war memoir trilogy at least five years ago. If not longer. It's an ideal 'slot it in between the hefty tomes' length. It's Spike Bloody Milligan, the greatest humorist of his generation.
And it's been sat there on the shelf getting ignored for half a decade.
I honestly cannot explain why. My tardiness shames me.
I suppose that when published this must have been riding the coat tails of quite a few other things. The Virgin Soldiers, Carry on Sargent, umm, err, surely there must have been others or my theory falls flat. The somewhat humorous look back at one's military experience. When did Fraser start his McAuslan stories?
Still. Not exactly breaking new ground when written, a well trod furrow by 2012.
That's sounds like I'm being horribly critical. Which I don't mean to be. It's biography. You can't condemn a man for having a similar set of experiences to his whole generation, or having had them, for writing about them, especially not when written about with engaging gentle humour.
Spike Milligan was one of the great humorists of his generation, and while the book's certainly not perfect, it's more a collection of incidents than a narrative, I'll definitely be reading the rest. Still don't know why I didn't years ago.
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